Kim Bobo Named One of Utne's "50 Visionaries Changing Your World"
October 19, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 19, 2009
Media Contact:
Danny Postel - Communications Coordinator | Interfaith Worker Justice
773-728-8400 x24 | dpostel@iwj.org
Kim Bobo Named One of the "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World"
Social Justice Campaigner and Author Recognized for "Crusading" Work
Utne Reader has named Chicagoan Kim Bobo one of 50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World, the magazine's second annual list of "revolutionary inventors, innovative environmentalists, and intrepid reformers with an unwavering, inexhaustible sense of purpose in their work."
"A longtime spiritual activist," the magazine's editors wrote, Bobo "is on a crusade to mobilize people of faith in the battle over fair pay, benefits, and equal treatment for low-wage workers."
Bobo is the founder and executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, a Chicago-based national network of 50 religion-labor groups, 23 worker centers, and five student chapters. Bobo is the author of the widely-discussed book Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid - And What We Can Do About It, which U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis has described as "excellent," and is co-author of Organizing for Social Change, the all-time best-selling manual on organizing in the country.
Joining Bobo on the Utne list are His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama; Kristian Olson, who fights neonatal death in low-income areas of the world using low-cost resuscitators and incubators made from old car parts; Rana Husseini, a campaigner against honor killings in her native Jordan; Nawal Nour, founder of the African Women's Health Center; Virginia Gardiner, a London-based green inventor and industrial designer; and Enrique Peñalosa, the innovative urban planner and former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia.
"Labors of peace, love, and justice are rarely recognized by our celebrity-obsessed media," the magazine's editors wrote. "Quiet resolve does not fill tents at the circus. Principle doesn't make for a sexy photo. Selflessness, unless it is exhibited by heroes in the heat of a crisis, is often presented as weakness. Yet it is only the strongest among us who can stay true to a vision."
Bobo is widely regarded as a pioneer in the interfaith worker justice movement. Her role in the development of that movement was the subject of an in-depth article by the Georgetown University historian Joseph McCartin (PDF available here).
To arrange an interview with Bobo, contact Danny Postel, Communications Coordinator for Interfaith Worker Justice, at 773-728-8400 x24, or dpostel@iwj.org.
#####